Stuck in a Loop by AdroitConceptions 2020-10-05T23:09:05Z
Nice visuals and feel, but needs a better first boss, I was stuck running in circles trying to get an attack prompt
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Profugo Barbatus
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Signal Tozoku | jam | 412 | 3.58 | 3.43 | 3.56 | 3.58 | 3.45 | 3.62 | 3.69 | |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Keychain Clash | jam | 225 | 3.72 | 3.39 | 3.83 | 4.39 | 4.18 | 3.37 | 3.64 | |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Slip Stream | jam | 207 | 3.84 | 3.72 | 3.63 | 2.72 | 4.54 | 3.80 | 3.52 | |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Minature Myth Merchant | jam | 620 | 3.47 | 3.02 | 3.50 | 3.80 | 4.52 | 3.30 | 4.00 | |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Heart of the Cards | jam | 627 | 3.52 | 3.77 | 2.62 | 2.85 | 3.60 | 3.47 | 3.62 | |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | The Heap | jam | 800 | 3.31 | 3.16 | 3.45 | 3.59 | 4.06 | 3.31 | 3.83 | |
| 2023 | 53 | Delivery | 👥 | Isekai Delivery | jam | 556 | 3.60 | 3.21 | 3.63 | 3.94 | 4.26 | 4.42 | 3.41 | |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Speed Court | jam | 831 | 3.26 | 3.07 | 3.38 | 3.73 | 4.28 | 3.61 | 3.52 | |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Help! My Cats Become a Demon Lord! | jam | 1351 | 2.72 | 2.44 | 2.66 | 3.23 | 3.12 | 3.38 | 2.55 | |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Normal Human | jam | 385 | 3.78 | 3.52 | 3.78 | 3.59 | 4.42 | 3.25 | 4.05 | 4.02 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Deep Into the Night | jam | 719 | 3.62 | 3.25 | 4.12 | 3.90 | 4.32 | 3.60 | 3.65 | |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Mobius Trips | jam | 937 | 3.40 | 3.09 | 3.42 | 3.61 | 3.75 | 3.42 | 4.02 |
Nice visuals and feel, but needs a better first boss, I was stuck running in circles trying to get an attack prompt
Couldn't get shooting to work, so just ran in circles, and ended up winning from lasting long enough? Controls were a bit confusing at first.
Pretty fun, I like the visuals, but I feel like the "only gather at the back" part held it back. You have no 'backwards' mobility, so it ends up with you flying in front of a patch and just braking, pointing yer butt at 'em and hoping for the best.
While the models seem high quality, the use of them is painful on the eyes with the aggressive lighting and the clashing. I had to stop because it was uncomfortable. The logs were interesting, but I couldn't keep going.
Not super challenging, was a bit dull even at times just waiting for the next break, but the theme was nice, I liked the visuals.
I don't really see how it worked in the theme, but the visuals were nice, the audio was pretty good, and it was satisfying to finish.
Its not clear how to manage your resources and what the costs are for them. I managed to get negative everything, and it broke. Food loss events gave me food, etc.
I was drilling into some dirt sideways, up against a boulder, and when I broke the dirt I pinged off down past the bottom of the screen. Didn't die, game just kept going along.
Has promise, I couldn't tell if I was having bad RNG not getting any minerals or just wasn't understanding how to get them, but otherwise it was fine. The music was nice, the graphics worked for me, and I only really stopped because I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, not that I wanted to stop.
Lol that was a lot more fun than I was anticipating. The music was nice, there's was something fun in a dumb way about just punching a bunch of fish and stunlocking some bois together for some sweet combos. As soon as I saw the end I predicted what it'd be, and it was exactly what I hoped for. Well done!
The whole interaction was really lacking feedback. I couldn't tell if I'd chewed enough, or needed to chew more, or if I'd forgotten to swallow. You can also shove like eight sausages into your mouth and just keep chewing and drinking and chewing and drinking and never swallow. Especially if you're like me, and miss the existence of the swallow button entirely.
I also don't see how it really applies to the theme, or what I was trying to achieve other than a highscore.
The dolphin controls are nice, but the Orca's are just homing missiles that aren't very fun to dodge or evade, as they'll just snap onto you. Its also hard to go deep when you'll just drown in short order.
Not bad, but definitely needed some polish or content - It was less puzzle solving and more watching everything fall off and the puzzle eventually balance itself.
Was unfortunately very dull for me - Playing as humans just involved walking slowly around the map while spinning in circles with fire held down, and playing as spores mostly involved dying and not understanding why. The audio loop was grating fast, and a mute button would have been appreciated.
@huckleberryjen Glad you tried it out! I'll have to see if the tutorial can be more clear about that mechanic - If the timer bar runs down to zero before you make a choice, a random word gets added. I know it says it, but its not really something the tutorial actively shows off, since it has an extended timer on it.
Got completely skillgated in the second tutorial level trying to dive onto the wall, nothing I did worked out and there wasn't any feedback or indication of what I might be doing wrong - Can't jump to the wall, trying to diagonal dive onto it came short, trying to change direction mid jump with a dive didn't seem to be possible, so dropped it there.
Cute game, fun premise, but definitely outside my capabilities
I went completely offscreen so ripf. Not bad for 5 hours.
Couldn't figure out what exactly my goal was, so moved a horse onto the green cloud thing, and the horse proceeded to vanish. Next turn, I couldn't actually use the end turn button, so ended up picking a movement card after setting moves for both my surviving horses. I couldn't cancel out of the move menu, but did discover that I could select additional movement cards, causing them to seemingly be lost to the void.
Definitely think this could have used a tutorial splash page instead of the intro - While its a dumb kinda fun intro, I would have rather seen the time spent building something to explain the gameplay.
Pretty good, liked the idea. Will say its annoying that the games configured as a VR title, and automatically kicked open SteamVR on me.
Fun, but I couldn't tell why the value of my loot would just start crashing out for no reason while it was in my hand, under the deck.
That jump is very jarring, the perspective/lighting made it really difficult at times to actually judge the spacing of platforms, and the character doesn't actually run straight forward, and drifts to the right - This proved actively uncomfortable, not to mention making it difficult to aim a jump at times.
Looks cool, but I'm not installing some 3rd party client I don't know for a jam game, sorry. If you update it with a link on itch, let me know, and I'll come by and give it a go.
@piper-thompson S'not just Edge, doing the same thing for me on Chrome. Nearly flew past this game cuz of it.
Mouse felt very bad to control in this - ultimately gave up after a few runs because it was too sluggish, I felt I was fighting my mouse more than the bugs. Not bad otherwise, bit hard with how long shots bounce and the fact that they keep going when you do kill something with them.
That was genuinely fun, I enjoyed it.
Controls were extremely floaty and unresponsive, the agents themselves didn't seem to work right? They had a ranged attack that never connects, you only lose if they collide with you. I couldn't get outside the first area, door didn't work.
For some reason, it was surprisingly fun to just paddle around the fly. Good first jam :D
Thanks for playing! You're totally right, It is unfortunately just too dependent on the players reading speed, which can hardly be trained. By the time we realized it wasn't easily circumvented (Key words or highlights made it too easy), it was too late to reorient. So we put in the slow mode as a compromise for people who want to see all the cases and content.
Sometimes the design just gets away from you, but thats why jams are such a fun experience.
Thanks everyone, we're so glad you enjoyed it!
@turquoise-moon changing it to timing per argument did occur to me, but it occurred to late for me to figure out how to do so without the time pressure turning into "just wait for them to finish talking". If I'd thought of it at the very beginning, probably coulda worked it in. Ah well, such is jam design, sometimes you just gotta go with what you got.
@hawkin we had grander plans for the menu, but the artist was running low on time. We got the background of the menus in 9 minutes before the wrap, and the little doodles on the credits page was in the last 30 seconds, literally. So I threw in what I had lol.
@alexis-brochec Glad you enjoyed it! Non-english speakers didn't occur to me, shoulda added a longer option beyond 30 seconds. Picking the music was fun, but proper credit for it goes to good old Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech - track names are listed in the credits.
Not bad! Definitely suffered from some of the usual "I don't know what interaction I'm expected to do" issues navigating the hospital, but pretty good for a jam entry. I liked the actual voice acting, the power of anime and god got a good laugh outta me.
That was pretty fun! I liked the wiggly arms and figuring out the package puzzles - completely whiffed my first day by pressing the red button on the scanner to 'send' but that was probably just me ignoring the instructions. Really good use of the theme, and a novel take on exactly how to implement it.
I liked the art in the world, how everything was animated and textured and generally felt alive. The first half chasing parts and screws was fine, I normally dread 3d platforming but it actually felt just right, a generous amount of collider sticking and airtime to make sure it wasn't too frustrating.
The second half, as the robot however, was genuinely uncomfortable. The inverted controls were a pain (Quite literally, I have a weird tension in my neck now after fighting with it) and I feel it took away from what was otherwise a nice little jumping puzzle area with the robot.
I will say I found the sound fairly grating after a time, but all together this is really quite impressive for a single dev, well done!
That was actually really nice! As a Canadian, I can always appreciate the snow, and the environment as a whole was a lot prettier than I expect out of a Jam game, and the path to follow was well crafted - Not so obvious as to be the only way or clearly carved out, but intuitive and easy enough to flow along, even if you detoured at a point. The movement of the guy on the sled was nice and felt good, and watching him ping off when I reached the snowy lake and thought "I wonder if I can climb that mountain" was a good laugh.
Not to bad - Just when I felt it was getting stale, the balloon segment introduced some verticality and new considerations. This was fun to play, but I do feel the hurtbox for your attack could do to be tightened up - Trying to hit enemies that are very close to you is an exercise in frustration, which made jumping attacks on anyone not horizontal to you unreliable at best.
Complains of missing runtime dll's when I try to launch. The oft unspoken troubles of getting a custom engine to run on most machines strikes again.
Pretty game, the space trucker bit was pretty thin though - I spent longer climbing stairs to the terminals than I spent flying between the station. I definitely liked the ship design though, pretty little angular beast.
Not bad! Most of the maps were not worth optimizing with the time limit, but the ones that were served as nice little puzzles to work through. A nice and relaxing take on the theme!
Man, I haven't seen the blender game engine for years, actually had a double take when I opened the file folder. That being said, this was more fun than it had any right to be. Watching a package crumple over some pedestrians head was a treat, and the whole thing was pretty solidly in the dumb fun space. Had a massive lagspike near the end that hung around and nearly got unplayable, and had an issue where near the end a car got stuck on the front of me and was able to overpower my engine, and forced me back - until another car hit my bumper, and then the first poor bastard pinged off into space after being forced into the road. A bug, but of the fun kind for sure.
Fun, but had a few bugs just in the one run.
I had three packages spawn on the same pad, to be delivered to the same pad - So I just sat there racking up half the stack.
I had only a few seconds left in a run, hit the 5s time pause powerup, and got hit by a bundle of ghost things at the same time. My timer went to zero, but I didn't die, and could keep driving - the ghosts just stuck to me, but couldn't deduct time or die. The game persisted in this state, let me pick up a package, deliver it, and then delivering it set me to -11 seconds and killed me.
In my second run, I got stuck when I was on the delivery circle and it just wouldn't deliver, regardless of where I parked.
all that being said, it was fun to play, I liked how the different vehicles behaved and how they looked. The map was pretty basic, but the character art was nice and seeing the additional quips was a good reason to keep driving.
Tried the download version, looks like you forgot to pack the game files with the executable, or include them in a zip.
Not bad, I really liked the skycar and the building designs, as with the atmosphere effect of the winds blowing between them. The delivery aspect was simple and satisfying, the delivery accuracy mechanic was a nice touch. Managed to soft lock the game when I threw a package down into the void to see what'd happen - The answer was nothing, just waited for me to deliver the lost goods.
Looks good, but its not very intuitive what I am doing, what success looks like, etc. Knowing what I'm carrying, or being able to shelve things for future orders would be nice. I'm also not entirely sure if I was delivering orders - I started grabbing things from the top and trying to match them to the bottom, and getting confused why I couldn't pick things up. Then I noticed the orders clipboard, and wandered around for a life trying to figure out how to deliver things - I mistook the ramp for some sort of reroll since interacting with it just changed my order with no other details.
Definitely could have done with an in-game tutorial to highlight elements and whats relevant, or some visible scoring to make intuiting it possible.
Good entry for a first jam! I liked the addition of the bonuses, added a reason to pay attention to the map instead of just flying by the indicators. Took a while to get used to the controls, but thats probably just me expecting tank style accelerate and turn, instead of the virtual pointer.
Fun, but pretty difficult. Maybe I'm just smoothbrained though, caveman gamedev brain hurty.
Neat idea, but the control mapping was extremely awkward - I would have liked to have been able to click on the ingredients, or see the key on the ingredient. I had to look down, mentally map the column, and then hit it, then look up and do the same for the second ingredient - by which point I probably missed the delivery.
Pretty funny stuff! Deliberately giving the worst response lead to some funny combinations.
Pretty slow, hard to find anyone to actually kidnap, I got one and then drove off the map out of boredom - probably needs invisible walls. Could be an interesting premise, the writing primed me for a bit of a faster, light hearted thing.
Pretty simplistic, but I liked how the kidnappers stood out very clearly with their outlines. It felt good to not feed any babies to monsters from a visual misidentification. Watching a miss skid across the floor was nice, but it was pretty short.
Gonna be honest here, I didn't really like this. The visual were nice, excluding the background taking some time (and lots of grey space) to actually tile in as I travelled. The art really did communicate the sense of cold, which as a Canadian, I can tell you felt pretty much right.
Unfortunately, I can't really say anything about the rest of the game. I didn't understand what I was doing or what my goal was, just that touching houses lit them up and seemed to heal me. The jump is extremely underpowered, making it impossible to jump over a snow dune if you don't line up and come to a complete stop first - When you jump while moving, movement is all but exclusively horizontal, so you just yeet yourself into the snowbank. The snowbanks themselves suck, literally - once your in them, its a slog to get out, and its not even worth backtracking and trying to jump over again - it won't deal enough damage to kill you, and you'll probably miss the jump again anyway due to the controls.
The ice sliding also felt bad - I'm sure the goal was to give a feeling of risk to ice throwing off an otherwise monotonous journey, but I found that touching the ice is what triggered the fast movement, not inertia or anything - So I could touch the edge of an ice bit and go flying across normal ground as if I'd hit a speed booster.
I think if this had some more refinement and development, it could become a quite pretty sidescroller, what with all the attention and detail lavished into those parallax backgrounds, but the gameplay actively detracts from that, obliging you to stare at a narrow strip of the ground to really understand what's going on.
Shame you couldn't finish it, the character animations and environmental art are nice. Props for submitting still though, better than bailing out.
That was a really cute idea, and well done. I enjoyed running the puzzles, didn't finish though. Moving platforms and stacks of words showed up and I noped out lol.
Didn't seem like the game worked for me. Pack seemed to vanish when I picked it up, but I couldn't go through the front door with or without it. Couldn't find another way in either. Not sure what the gameplay was supposed to be, but seems like it broke for me.
Not bad at all, only change I'd really like to see is not having your action queue cleared when you try again - Making a brain mistake on the last one tossed me back to rebuild 10 orders while keeping its orientation in my head
A sensitivity control would have been really nice, felt like the slightest twitch of the mouse was enough to send me spinning, made me feel a bit sick. Feels like the fundamentals are there, but there's a lack of feedback, or some of the enemies are broken, not sure which - I couldn't tell if I wasn't damaging them, or if they had unlimited health, or something else. Either way they tanked way more damage than I expected.
Between the framerate being fairly low, and the very high input sensitivity, I struggled to find any of the diamonds (I got one) or to notice the map shrinking to any degree. Given some refining though, and I think it'd be a decent little arcade shooter. I did like having the various ammo types to pick up.
That was pretty good! I didn't actually go through the trial and error of solving the four free tiles, but I enjoyed myself enough up to that point. Great use of the theme, even if I struggled with the gaming chair lol. Well done!
Technically impressive what with it being from scratch, but the gameplay came out super thin. Not bad, but just a bit boring - pause 'n throw a hedgehog in front of a truck, repeat until you've got $6, stop the next truck with a gun, repeat until you've a gunwall.
Are you planning a post-jam version with some more defense types or opponent types? Little extra meat could make this a fun little game.
I like the idea, but I feel the turning tile graphics are a bit of a nightmare to parse- I lost the second level just by virtue of not being able to find the "Up and right" turn tile. By the time I realized that I could just slide on one straight piece into the next and didn't need turns, the idea had soured on me a bit.
@xry @floppynub I'm glad you liked it! We really tried to push the polish and quality, even if a few bugs slipped through. Knew the tutorial would be essential when the game throws so much at you.
@smoe Sorry to hear that! I struggled nailing down the balance, but perhaps if you and other folks would be interested, I can throw together a post-LD difficult selector patch, adjust some of the timing and escalation in the players favor with an easier mode.
@monochromesquid Did they happen to only drop with some Wireless packets? That was the fallback in case the spawner asked for gibberish, but I never had a chance to test it was falling back correctly. Might be they displayed one icon but wanted to be in a different slot.
@orangeoceans Glad you liked it! There's actually most of the code in place for an entire category of ugprades that was going to glue into an adversarial background progression - Mandatory software updates slowing down the processing nodes, or a user application biasing one kind of traffic over another - So upgrades would always feel like just being ahead of the curve, rather than eventually becoming unstoppable. Codes even in place for the input queue penalty to be lessened, or the starting spawn timers to be buffed. I didn't have time to finish implementing most of it, mostly because of balance, but partially the overhead to communicate its existence to the player. The tutorial was already getting uncomfortably long.
@cronch Glad you like it! Do you feel that the difficult was from keeping track of all the packets at once, or was it more not being able to move them out of the input queue and dealing with that malus?
Great use of the theme! The mechanics might be simple, but they interplay really well and the interactions between them are satisfying. Very well done for a Compo entry!
I really liked the graphics, but the rest of the game was a bit lost on me - I never felt constrained by space, and I never really understood what was driving the customer ratings, or what I wanted them high for. I think this would have really benefited from a tutorial to explain some of the mechanics.
Genuinely awesome, I was impressed with the voice acting, and the mood hits incredibly close to home, in all the best ways. Excellent work and well done!
Could use a tutorial, even just in-game controls that show when you start a new one. Took me a while to figure out that WASD works, but only after spawning an item and before releasing it. failed a few times dropping trash willy-nilly on my cabin to bounce off and instafail
Not bad! First run was a bit weird for me, I guess I spawned without a weapon or something, I wasn't able to shoot at all. Wandered off the map and fell forever, nearly called it there. Tried again, and then it went great. I think it'd benefit a lot from a bit more visual clarity in drops - everything being some variety of disk or sphere makes it hard to pick things out from the crowd.
I'm not going to lie, I have no clue what I just played or what I was supposed to do. I put some shapes in other shapes, but they didn't seem to do anything no matter how I did it. I had a shotgun, but nothing to shoot.
Really could have used a tutorial or something - the graphics are great, but the gameplay doesn't explain itself very well at all - The target panel doesn't populate, so the first few runs I died just not knowing who to kill. Mechanics like push don't seem to work, or if they do work, I don't know how. Having to actually make it back out isn't clarified, so I spent a while failing trying to figure out who else I was supposed to kill, like the other goon.
A little time spent introducing and directing the player and this would have been really nice.
Not a bad premise, would be interesting to see it with more mechanical depth though.
Neat premise, but could use some safety balances- dying to an enemy spawning on me as I wraparound doesn't feel good lol.
I like the art, but the rest wasn't so great - AC repair didn't seem to work at all, so couldn't advance.
Well made little puzzle game you have here! Once I wrapped my head around the basics, it was very intuitive.
Couldn't wrap my head around what was happening, or what I was supposed to be doing. Moving things places did things, but it wasn't really clear why, what the lanes meant, why one of my characters was randomly lost to the void gathering, etc. Ended up stopping because I couldn't deduce whether I was even succeeding or not.
To be honest, really good for six hours. Not great on its own, but in six hours you managed a gameplay loop that I could mostly intuit the rules of and play with.
Good stuff - I feel like some of the elements weren't intuitive and more of just a guessing game, but the premise is sound, and throwing stuff at the wall wasn't punished so the guessing wasn't a problem. I liked it overall!
Sorry to say that I tried repeatedly, but the game was unplayable. The framerate was in seconds per frame, and attempting to move would just have me walk through the floor and fall until I was reset.
Fun premise, if a bit hard at times. I liked the visual style quite a bit.
Fun, but didn't make it very far, the web build had very poor performance, was running at 6-8fps. Wish there was a downloadable version to sidestep that.
I actually liked this - couldn't beat the boss because my little guys wouldn't stop attacking to leave the attack zones, but it was a fun little concept executed well enough.
This is a really dumb, fun idea in all the best ways. Good stuff!
Really fun little game, loved it! First run went a bit short because it didn't occur to me to pre-cook foods, did much better run two.
@cure - I've just uploaded an untested Linux build, feel free to give it a shot! @pythorogus - We more or less gave up on the theme tbh lol, the idea was too fun to not see finished. @sam-gorman - They're people, virtual youtubers specifically, its a thing for them to theme themselves after animals. Kerowyn is a Frog, Ebi is a shrimp. @jona-scheidig she's pond streaming in her clothes, yea. Vtubers are kind of crazy like that. Glad you enjoyed it!
Neat little game! Relaxing, but a bit thinky all the same. I liked the art quite a bit. Despite accidentally discarding multiple things I wanted to use, I still managed a 76 on my run.
Lol, that got a smile on my face when I started and realized what was going on. Simple, but nice, good stuff
Not a bad premise, definitely needs a balance pass though, skews way towards the hard in the opening when you're still figuring out the basics. Thinning out the early waves while you get used to it woulda helped a lot. Otherwise, looks and sounds real nice, pretty good for a jam entry!
Neat mechanics, but absolutely brutal on the eyes. Didn't end up finishing the first level just because it started to hurt.
I really like the premise and the looks, but in practice its a bit frustrating to play. Feels like you can't escape/avoid the monster, and the opening area is "dead ends, or paths the monster is actively in". Maybe a tutorial level to help introduce the rules would have helped.
Gonna be honest, couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to do. First run through, just wandered down, found each machine, pressed E a couple times on them. They beeped, but didn't really seem to do anything. Expected to get some dialog like with the interactable items that showed what they were. Died seemingly randomly climbing stairs.
Second run, did the same but went back to the main console to check on the resource levels again, and saw that using the machines does change them, but also saw that they don't seem to change or advance unless you do anything. Ran around a bit interacting with the machines just a few time each trying to figure out if anything was happening, but didn't seem to make any progress towards anything, and just quit.
If there is an end or a goal, it needs to be better indicated. Similarly, the machines should make it a bit clear that they're actually doing anything - In a game, if I hear a button go beep but nothing happens, I assume nothing happened. If something does happen, there should be a visual indication at/with the machine, maybe fuel/energy/o2 indicators in the respective rooms.
All that said, I did love the art, it looks really nice. I'm not much of an artist so I can't really elaborate why, just that its a really nice pixel art style and fits the tone well.
Can't get it to launch, no errors, just thinks for a split second then kills its own process. Modern GPU, correct Java Version, but doesn't kick off anything.
Think you need to publish a patch, you forgot to capture the mouse. I can't turn left because it keeps leaving the screen, or hitting the edge if I fullscreen it. Looks nice for a jam entry, that's all I can really say right now.
Damn, now that was a good game! Started with middling expectations, but once it kicked off into the first run, I was really impressed with the visuals - once I died, I thought "That's neat, pretty good for a jam" - and then the dude started rambling off his theory. Full ear to ear grin moment right there, went right back in with "OK, But" because I had to get it a second time. And yes, it was just as good second time around, props to getting all that stuff voiced, and voiced well!
As far as detriments go, all I'd say is that its a bit hard at times to tell if you're actually going to hit or miss, and gets worse the farther off center you go. I suppose I could say there's some thematic consistency to things getting less stable the farther off center you go, but I don't think that was the specific intent there lol.
Overall really impressive, I don't often give out 5 star overalls but this came together perfectly! Entire team should be proud of this one.
Not bad for a first game, especially when you've done it under jam constraints. The initial exploration was nice, the boss fight could have used a bit of tuning. Tried it a couple times, and the vertical attack would just force me to the side, trap me, and kill me, sub wasn't fast enough to avoid it. Telegraphing the attack with the red box was good though, even if it only served to make me realize how doomed I was lol.
1.2gb for a 2d jam game is a bit nuts for me, had to pass. But I guess something smaller on disk like TinyLlama might have struggled with the contextual elements.
I like the visuals, and the controls are generally good, but the combination of lack of air control and the double use of jump for hold to jump and hold to clamber means you're incentivized to hold space after a jump to make sure you catch the edge, but if you end up overshooting the edge just a bit you'll touch down properly, and them promptly and immediately throw yourself to your death. Combine that with the fact that you bounce on angled surfaces, and the pipes become an exercise in frustration as you either bounce off, jump off, or slide off and fail to clamber because you're avoiding space after last time you jumped off, to the point that it filtered me out.
That said, I consider it a good sign for a jam game to be fun enough that one singular misconsidered input combination is enough to sink it. Its not a difficult fix to make clamber the default when hitting an edge without holding space, and would single handedly clear up most of that problem space.
Loved the premise and visuals, but feel like the very limited left/right attack, and ability to get hit while you are performing an attack and getting interrupted just makes the beat-down element feel weak. If we had directional attacks and maybe a bit more range, it'd be even better.
Also, me and my artist are highly amused that we both had the same idea of rainbow/holo modifiers to stretch our assets, great minds think alike.
Found the puzzles a bit difficult at times, but I am also a bit sleep deprived so that's probably on me - Didn't finish as a result, but not out of frustration, just out of acknowledgement that I'm the problem. Regardless, I liked the use of sound in the first puzzle, and found the second room ones interesting, promised a lot of depth. Good stuff for a jam!
Very pretty, fun and interesting game. I appreciate all the little bits of polish that made it in, like the little sound effects and transitions. Those details can make or break a game, and definitely helped elevate yours.
Simplistic, but cute. I tend to play first and read descriptions later, so a bit of in game tutorial woulda been nice, but only took me a few moments to figure it out naturally. Just when I thought I was done, I unlocked the second floor and that immediately felt good, and getting new items feels even better, especially when they bring big rewards.
Looks nice, and I feel like there could be a good game in it, but its missing some core guts, couldn't wrap my head around what I was doing right or wrong. Feels like it could have used a lot better in-game feedback, even just a button to bring up a "what to do" type panel.
Movement and collision tends to feel pretty bad, but the quality of the 3d assets was really impressive. Sound would have taken it to the next level, even just a generic soundpack
Fun little premise, only thing I'd really say is that a quick on-screen tutorial would be nice, and it'd be nice to have a way to quit that isn't alt-f4.
Definitely would have appreciated a sensitivity setting, but worked as expected otherwise. I liked the premise, feels like a good prototype with bones that could be expanded on, more interactivity in rooting through the remains and the like. Really good showing for a jam weekend though!
Not bad, I liked the visuals, just wish we had some audio. Only thing I didn't like was overlapping asteroids, was mildly annoying to have ores just get stuck inside another rock. The game was overall very easy, but I enjoyed risking it with inertial dampeners off, to minimize fuel burn for some self imposed difficulty.
Not a bad premise, but sort of implodes on itself as you get larger, and not in a good way. The physics are such that you get to the point that you can easily absorb huge swathes, what feels like the end run as the game shouts "Finish it" at you, but bumping anything larger than a lone gnome brings you to a complete halt, none of the speed or mobility cards have any effect anymore, and you just kind of get stuck vaguely bouncing back and forth picking up one piece at a time, just when your gnomic rampage should be hitting its crescendo.
Unfortunately, that leaves the game to end on a grating note rather than a triumphant one, and lead me to the alt-f4 escape hatch.
Had a weird bug where the main menu and intro were excessively zoomed in, so I couldn't actually read any of what was going on. Luckily, it seemed to be fine in actual gameplay, although I couldn't find all the planes on the second level, so maybe there were out of sight ones I missed?
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@aniretti Glad you enjoyed it! I actually made something in a similar vein for LD54 as well, https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/the-heap
@cedaoan Didn't have time to implement any specific indicators, was thinking about making occupied folders wobble some when she's being a gremlin in them. Instead she's sneaky, so you just gotta go digging. And of course, she's always in the last place you look, right?
@bananplyte Glad you enjoyed it! she's a little devil, but that makes it all the more satisfying when you manage to get past her, even when she gets cheeky and chains a captcha with a deep file dive.
@mr-sun With the Wifi, you just need to drag her far enough away from its icon on the taskbar to stop her. Unfortunately, she was also a little gremlin to me, and her AI regularly skipped the "Go to the wifi to eat" part of it and skipped right to eating, she'd pick it up halfway across the screen just to spite you. Did mean she would immediately drop it when confronted though.
Who woulda thought that designing an evil entity would lead to it striking back at me as well :pensive:
Seems well made, but I don't see the theme connection at all, and there's a distinct lack of feedback when something can't be done. Customer rejecting a dish with no idea why, only to remember "oh yea plates are a thing". Take meat off the stove to put onto a dish, dish just won't accept it - presumably burned, but dough didn't burn so didn't cotton onto this being a mechanic. Little things like that make it difficult to tell when I'm doing something wrong vs when the games not working right.
Neat premise, but it was a bit too unintuitive. I figured out what I think was a "stop and wait" sign in the middle of the roads by observing other vehicles, but there were other situations where I observed and repeated and instantly lost. It also felt generally weird to have an infraction counter that goes up to 7 but to lose with just one point against it, especially when I couldn't see why - I assume a cop or something coming up behind me, but I can't look around. Which comes back to the difficulty of observation, we can't really look or move around to see whats happening without violating the rules and losing.
I think if this had some more playtesting and iteration, it'd be a pretty fun little game. Which is pretty good praise for a jam entry.
Immediately recognized this as coming from the team of Deep Truth. Found the audio and visuals highly amusing.
Neat premise, but plays very poorly. There's no real feedback to being hit, so its difficult to tell if you're even being attacked or taking damage. At the same time, the enemy is highly aggressive and often cheesily positioned. I walked down a few times and just fell dead for very little apparent reason before realizing there were just two guys waiting to shoot me in the back passing a blind spot, etc. Combined with me not making it far enough to figure out if there's any health recovery options, and it quickly wore out its welcome.
The static asset quality is pretty nice, but it does clash with the low resolution environmental details, and the lack of animation/feedback on the players weapon, making the whole thing feel visually inconsistent and clash, bringing consistent attention to its weaker parts.
I think with a balance pass to move it away from the super low TTK and towards its evidently arcade leanings, there'd be something decent here, just needs to embrace the pieces it has available.
Really fun, McFoley's got a laugh outta me and once I figured out the instruction book had multiple pages to flip through, I was having fun. The soda flavors got a real kick outta me, the humor landed well the whole way through. Great job!
Neat premise overall, and I did really like the overall execution, even though I'm not a fan of card-based gameplay in general. Only real issue was late game trying to get my destroyers to actually stay in the north. They would spend a fifth of their time fighting up north, and then rather than stay on hand for the next push, would immediately run for the south, despite their being no enemies.
But I don't feel that issue majorly detracted from it, it was fun overall. Well done!
@beastpanda If I were in your position, I'd allow spending one or two points during the deployment phase to redeploy instead, letting you move them anywhere you could otherwise spawn them. So if just one unit is out of place, its probably not worth it, but if you've got a bunch, then your energy reserves would let you bring 3-4 into action over spawning 1-2, so long as you had old units to redeploy.
Cute - I think the tracking and identifying of multiple pulses is very good, but I dislike the hostile pulses. For a game that seems to be mostly about pattern identification based on positioning, punishing the player for taking their time to think an assess seems counterproductive. Perhaps it would have been better served as signals that are harmful to try and catch, to make the player distinguish between regular and 'false positive' ones, as opposed to rushing a partial conclusion to avoid damage.
Graphically impressive, mechanically disappointing. I can see the premise, but the effort to communicate the ruleset is very poorly done. The first puzzle past "just repeat the symbol back" does so by introducing a character combination not in the book, note, or environment. None of the existing elements of the book or note provide contextual clues as to what kind of action is occuring, much less how to deduce new symbol actions. I understood "action" and "inaction" but I didn't understand "One Action [Device with something]" or how to respond to it with what appeared to be a series of numbers. Quit after a couple deaths.
More playtesting outside the dev team and more information would probably have helped.
On top of that, little user experience things could have been done to be addressed. The lack of mouse constraint makes this awkward feeling to play on multimonitor setups. Distributing the game via google drive as opposed to itch.io can make some people nervous about downloading. Camera FoV as a zoom is very disorienting.
Still, its a very pretty game, and there's clearly a lot of love and attention put into the assets and environment. If that was the primary focus of the team, then well done, it landed great.
Good premise, I think with just a little more time in the oven it'd be great. Visual design really stood out to me, it was very clear at all times what was going on gameplay wise.
Not bad, simple but well implemented in what it did. I ended up having to go back to the first broadcast spot a second time because I didn't realize there was an ultimate 'correct' spot to tune in on, just read the message myself in a close enough spot and moved on. Once I got it accidentally at the second spot and it no longer appeared with an arrow on screen, I realized I'd just missed it. But that was the only hiccup I hit, really good for a jam game!